A Particular Blend
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPLM slash. Harry and Lucius spend the Christmas together at Particular, an isolated house deep in a silver wilderness. COMPLETE.


**Title: **A Particular Blend

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Lucius

**Warnings: **Fluff, established relationship

**Rating: **R

**Wordcount: ** 2300

**Summary: **Harry and Lucius share their Christmas together at Particular, an isolated Malfoy house deep in a silver wilderness

**Author's Notes: **Another Advent fic, written for alafaye, who asked for Harry and Lucius spending time alone together in an isolated Malfoy house that the Weasleys and Draco didn't know about.

**A Particular Blend**

Harry opened his eyes so slowly that it felt as if the lids barely parted from the bottoms. He yawned and rolled slowly over, cuddling his hands into the warm embrace of the sheets at the base of the pillow. He could go back to sleep, as far as he was concerned. Someone else might have different ideas about that, of course.

Then a hand came to rest on his back, and Harry smiled into his skin.

"Shall we?" Lucius asked, his voice as soft as the rustle of the sheets when he rolled over.

Harry signaled his silent willingness by turning his head to the side. Lucius lifted the hair off the nape of Harry's neck to kiss him there, slow and long as the rise of the sun.

Harry and Lucius hadn't been together long, but Harry thought one of the things that connected them so well was a deep silence, an ability to let each other be in peace-or take an action and trust it would be welcomed. After all, they were both powerful wizards. If one of them didn't like something the other one did, then they would be sure to let him know.

And Harry did like this, the sure, smooth way that Lucius moved behind him, rose to his knees, and then shifted Harry to the side by rolling his hips a little, his hands as gentle and careless as though he was an expert sculptor shaping clay. Harry was the one who spread his legs, and Lucius was the one who bent down, examined the space, and nodded his approval. Harry knew he nodded without looking back, because he could hear the rustle of Lucius's hair past his ears.

It was so _nice _not to have to do a lot, but to still trust that his wishes would be attended to impeccably. Harry sighed and buried his head in his arms.

Lucius's hand fell in the middle of his back, quiet, asking attention without demanding it. Harry wriggled his hips in response. He was still there, still feeling. But Lucius needed acknowledgment sometimes.

Lucius sighed, a sound of almost inaudible contentment, and then shifted forwards and pointed towards Harry's arse with his cock. Harry lifted himself, not on hands and knees but closer to it than he had been a moment ago, and Lucius slid inside.

The spells to ease the way and loosen Harry were being cast as Lucius moved into him, nonverbal and always ready at the exact right moment. Not before. Lucius believed in being punctual.

Harry laughed into his arms again. There had been a time when that particular trait of Lucius's drove him mad. If he couldn't have at least a little holiday from correct manners, Harry felt, he could never stay with him.

But then he came to see it as a fault, a flaw to be treasured, not an irritating perfection to be struggled against, and that let Harry live with it. He turned his head to the side and lipped Lucius's fingers when they came near his face, and Lucius sighed again.

"You are," he said, and Harry answered with a soft flip of his tongue along the edges of Lucius's palm.

Lucius rode him almost in silence, except for the natural soft grunts and moans such exertion inspired. Harry treasured the silence, because it made him listen harder for the other sounds than speech. Lucius's hands slipping and squeaking in the sweat along his back. The bed shifting back and forth, and settling almost noiselessly. His own hissing between his teeth, and then calling his breath back into his lungs when Lucius relaxed and pulled back.

Then Lucius would drive in again, and Harry would once more lose the breath from his lungs in a _most _satisfying way.

The ripples of movement overlapped each other, flowing around Harry until he felt as if he were suspended in the middle of a pool with jets of water shooting out from the sides. Like the Prefects' Bath, he thought hazily. Or that one bath Lucius had promised they would use here, but which they hadn't used last night, because they'd fucked in an ordinary tub, water spilling out across the sides, lapping him-

Harry came, another ripple that seemed to pass _through _him this time, and out through the end of his cock. His head dropped straight down to the pillow, and he released what Lucius called his lustful groan, a deep sound that shook a little at the end.

Lucius drove forwards against his arse and released at much the same time, and then his cheek came to nestle beside Harry's. He recovered faster from an orgasm than anyone Harry had ever seen, certainly faster than Harry. He kissed Harry's cheek.

"Good morning," he whispered.

* * *

Harry stood in the kitchen of Particular, enjoying the view out the window.

The trees stretched into the distance, rank after rank, silvery under the fall of the snow. Harry looked at their branches touching each other-mostly pines, but also, he thought, some birches-and the pallor that covered them, and felt a great sense of peace. He leaned his elbows on the windowsill and studied the wilderness, now and then sipping at his cup of tea. He knew it was growing colder, but didn't cast a Warming Charm. Drinking cold tea made him feel closer to the wilderness out there.

"What do you see?" Lucius asked, stepping up behind him. "Surely no animal." His hands rested on Harry's shoulders with the same familiarity that he had used to fuck him in the bed.

Harry turned around and smiled at Lucius, leaning his head back so their hair mingled. "The stillness," he answered, as he set his cup down on the windowsill and reached back to capture a strand of his hair and a strand of Lucius's. He plaited them idly together, black and pale. "The solitude. And the color. You weren't kidding when you called this a silver wilderness."

"Perhaps the only one left in the British Isles," Lucius breathed. "A patch of untamed forest, where the trees turn everything that touches them to silver. The leaves and needles that grow here in spring tremble with colors one never sees elsewhere, colors like flickering moonlight. The rain becomes a curtain of dazzling mist. The summer is tamed and cooled by their presence."

His hands firmed on Harry. "But perhaps the most striking effect is in autumn. Then, the leaves themselves are silver instead of red or gold. They sift to the ground, and strange flowers bloom at night, and one walks through a sweet-smelling wildness."

Harry closed his eyes. "I'd like to see it with you," he whispered.

"You will," Lucius whispered back, at once, his voice as firm as his body. "What I have claimed, I do not let go."

Harry nodded, and they stood there until Lucius himself grew impatient with cold tea and drew Harry away to breakfast.

* * *

Going to Particular, which was the name of the hidden Malfoy house, had been a matter of choice on both their parts, although more on Lucius's. He had looked up from the paper one day in Malfoy Manor and told Harry, "We will be spending Christmas at Particular."

Harry had blinked, and then nodded. He knew it concerned his friends, the way he so often followed Lucius's lead, things that Lucius had come up with first or suggested, and how he didn't rebel often enough to content them. It was one reason for spending Christmas alone, in fact.

The other was Draco.

He had accepted his father and his mother's parting. Harry himself had never asked about the reasons for that. Lucius had said they were Narcissa's own, and while the idea intrigued Harry-it implied Narcissa had been the one to instigate the divorce, not Lucius, which was stunning-he knew better than that, by then.

He and Lucius had their silences already, interweaving around them like the delicate embroidery of frost on the windows of Particular, as Harry was to see them later. They understood each other, and they spoke when they needed to, and Harry enjoyed the quiet, the depth of it, and how, when he had to speak up and tell Lucius to back off, the man would always do so at once. Harry knew he wouldn't have if Harry had made more of an "effort" to speak up instead of trusting their silence together.

But Draco, try as he might (Harry thought he did try) simply could not accept the notion of Harry Potter as his father's lover. It escalated from disbelief through tense silence (the part where Harry thought Draco was trying) to snide insults to open remarks to curses.

Draco had tried the curses when his father wasn't home. Harry had blocked them and made sure not to fire any in return. He knew he and Lucius couldn't survive Harry hurting Lucius's son, whom he loved in a way deeper and more private and fiercer than the way he loved Harry.

But, Harry had found out when Lucius stepped unexpectedly into the middle of their battle, Lucius had his own ideas about what to do when his two kinds of love conflicted.

Lucius had looked at both of them, his gaze so careful and distant that Harry had frozen. Then Lucius had nodded and turned to Draco.

"I love you very much," he had said. "You are my son. You are my heir. You represent the best of what the Malfoy family has to offer in the next generation."

Draco had flipped his hair a little and looked at Harry past his father's shoulder. Harry had only stood silent. He didn't think any of that had to do with Lucius's love for him. For one thing, Harry could have nothing to do with producing the next Malfoy generation. He thought maybe that was one reason Lucius had taken a male lover after Narcissa left.

"But you will not inherit the Manor until after I die." Lucius lifted his head like a cat seeking a mouse. "And from this moment, you are not welcome in it when Harry is here."

Harry had taken a silent step backwards. Lucius gave his head a quarter-turn and said, "And if you have a ridiculous idea of moving out of the Manor to spare Draco's feelings, you will not. Do you understand?"

Harry had, then. He still had a job as an Auror, and Draco lived on inherited wealth. Draco could spend plenty of time with his father when Harry wasn't around. He nodded.

Lucius faced Draco and made a banishing motion of his hand towards the fireplace. Draco glared, opened his mouth, looked at Lucius's face, and went.

Harry had assumed, without thinking about it, that he would spend most of Christmas with the Weasleys, and Lucius with his son. It had seemed impossible to do anything else, even though he wanted to. But Lucius had come up with the plan for Particular instead.

Harry had had only one question to ask. "Won't Draco come to seek us out there?" _And won't that make it awkward? _Although, Harry had to admit, so far the awkwardness had been all on his side. It appeared impossible to disturb Lucius's calm after the war was past.

"Draco does not know about it, and will not until I die and all Malfoy properties are bequeathed to him," Lucius said, and caught Harry's fingers to kiss them. "And I am a long way from death as yet."

* * *

Harry had almost felt too much warmth would violate the peculiar, poised coldness of Particular, that it would amount to melting and splashing around in the water of the silver wilderness. But Lucius had given him a single look when he ventured that opinion and invited him into the Fire Room.

Here, Harry thought, all the fire that burned throughout Particular came to dwell. The mantel and the walls were of the same dark wood, flickering with hints of red and black. The flames that dozed on the hearth wrapped that one corner of the world in warmth, and the heat radiated outwards. Harry could get all he wanted of the fire, while imagining that the silver dwelt unmolested in the far corners of the room.

Lucius sat beside him on the couch in front of the fire as they ate their Christmas dinner: thick slabs of everything, meat and toast and a kind of fish Harry didn't recognize and trembling cherry-flavored pudding. Even the pumpkin juice Harry had asked for seemed as though it was sliding in heavy, delicious lumps down his throat.

Lucius reached out when a house-elf came to take the meal and put his hand on Harry's knee. Harry looked at him.

As if sharing a secret, Lucius leaned closer and closer, and if he was conscious of the way he stole Harry's breath to do it, Harry thought he must be pleased. That certainly seemed to be the meaning of the small smile that curved his lips.

"I love you," Lucius whispered.

Harry breathed it back, barely able to raise his voice. It was something they rarely said, because it meant breaking the silence, and in a way that left them both vulnerable.

But Lucius drew him near, and kissed him, and touched a lock of Harry's hair to braid together with his as Harry had done earlier at the window. The warmth of the fire flashed through Harry, followed by shivers that echoed the silver wilderness. Harry shuddered in delight and drew Lucius closer and closer.

They lay together on the couch in front of the flickering fire, and the air was quiet and marvelous around them, heavy with a Christmas in a silver wilderness and a hidden Malfoy house.

**The End.**


End file.
